The actual getting away took nearly two hours, owing to what looked to me like the sheer clumsiness of the crew. The passengers on that ship were the most motley lot imaginable. There were seven hundred picturesque Moslems from Bokhara in central Asia on their way to Mecca; a hundred or so orthodox Jews bound for Jerusalem; a lot of Persian merchants, and a score of old German Lutheran colonists. All the way out of Odessa harbor there was trouble with the ship, and about nine o’clock at night our bow was turned back toward Odessa. It appeared that the ship had been manned by a Black Hundred crew. Of the forty-eight men all told in the ship’s company, forty-two had never been to sea before, and not one man on the ship knew how to handle the wheel! We were unable to get back into the harbor, and even if it had been possible the captain feared to do so lest a riot break out, so he went ashore in a small boat, returning some time after midnight with three or four officers from other ships who were prepared to do seamen’s work. We learned later that the five ships of the same line that followed ours to sea under similar conditions all came to grief. Two were stranded, two were burned, and one foundered.
The next morning at sunrise the decks presented a weird and memorable picture. The several hundred Moslems in their long bright-colored garments, their green, and brown, and white turbans, the women with long horsehair veils covering their faces all but the eyes (many of them having brought along three or four of their wives from their harems), all kneeling on little strips of carpet, their faces toward Mecca, were vigorously reciting their morning prayers. The Jews had donned their black-and-white prayer shawls, and bound phylacteries to their foreheads and arms, and they with their faces toward Jerusalem were droning their prayers of thanksgiving and praise. The Germans, evidently touched by the religiousness of their fellow-passengers, after much unpacking drew forth a great family Bible, and while all the others gathered about in a semi-circle on a hatch, one fat old paterfamilias read aloud from the New Testament, and when he had done, they all fell on their knees and united in the Lord’s Prayer.
There was something tremendously impressive in the scene, and just a touch of humor, too. The German united with his wife in prayer for blessings to be bestowed upon them both; the Jew thanked God he was not born a woman; and the Moslem called aloud upon Allah without thought of his several wives who squatted near him, not during to approach even in prayer the God of their husband! A breath of fragrant morning air from a soft and pleasant clime wafted across the decks; the buoyant waters danced in the glistening sunlight and one squared one’s shoulders in sheer joy of being alive—and thankfulness that Russia and all her darkness lay behind.
Thirty-six hours after leaving Odessa we passed out of the Black Sea into the azure waters of the Bosphorus. Frowning cannon greeted us, on either side of the beautiful shore, but we who were quitting sanguinary Russia scarcely gave them a passing glance. The golden domes of Turkish mosques began to glisten in the distance under the morning sunlight, and soon we could descry the crescent-topped minarets that here supplant the cross-capped onion domes of Russia’s churches and cathedrals. Shortly before noon we rode at anchor close to the Golden Horn.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TREND
Whither? The future of Russia—Why the revolution has not yet succeeded—Probable outcome of the struggle—Inevitableness of eventual overthrow of present régime—Attitude of foreign Powers—The Russian people during the period of rebellion—Effect upon national character—The Czar and the people—The Czar and the world—What we may expect.
Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
Arthur Hugh Clough.